For an understanding of the computer implemented life form, we must begin by questioning ourselves about more than “what is life?” But, we must really ask the question of “what is intelligent life?”—or “sentience” as it is often called. Colin McGinn (born Mar. 10, 1950) a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami, has postulated that humans are incapable of defining sentience. McGinn speculates that the human mind is incapable of comprehending itself entirely, and that this incapacity has primarily occupied most of Western philosophy since Descartes. Thus, McGinn's answer to the hard problem of consciousness is simply that humans are not capable of and cannot ever find the answer to the question, what is life?
The roots of artificial intelligence (AI), however, date as far back as early Greek mythology with mythical and animated objects. For example, the Argo was the ship of the Argonauts which was a vessel possessed of speech because at its prow Athena fitted in a “speaking timber.” The Greek myths of Hephaestus and Pygmalion even incorporated intelligent robots. Many intelligent artifacts have appeared numerous times since then in literature as fictional mechanical devices often behaving with intelligence.
The prior art of uncertainty computing is much more recent. The Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (AUAI), for example, considers itself to be at the very “forefront of research in Artificial Intelligence.”